when we'll run out of time
by Author Incognito
Summary: The tombstone beside his bears the name Molly Hooper.


He meets her the day after Sherrinford. Her eyes are red from crying and she's clutching a cup of coffee to her chest. He feels a pang of guilt in his chest knowing that the reason for her sorrow and tears is him (after all isn't it always.)

Molly is the one who starts the conversation Sherlock has been dreading for the past twelve hours. "Why?" and that single word is enough to make his reserve to nearly falter. Because even if it was Eurus was the one who orchestrated it he was still the one who made the final blow wasn't he?

So he tells her. When Sherlock gets to the part about the coffin (her coffin) she takes in a deep breath and her eyes grow wide with fear. His voice fails him at that point and he has to take several deep breaths before he can talk again. He finishes telling her what happened. About Redbeard and Victor and dark wells with things hidden inside them for decades or mere minutes.

"I'm sorry." is the first thing Molly says once he's done. "About your friend. And your sister. and well . . . . everything really."

"Thank you." Sherlock says.

They sit in silence for what feels like hours or even days. Sherlock looks away to watch people pass by through the window and a small of part himself wonders what it would be like if it were her and him walking out there. He is drawn out of his musing by Molly speaking again. "You didn't mean it though."

"What?" He turns back to her and sees that she has drawn up into herself.

"I love you." She says, her voice small. "you didn't mean it."

He wants to say that he did. That he meant it more than anything. And he wants to say it again but he can't because the last time he said it he hurt her in the worst way possible. So he doesn't, and she must take that as an affirmative because she simply bows her head.

"I'm moving." Molly tells him in a voice so soft he almost can't hear her. "it's just with everything that's happened . . . I have to get away." From you is what she doesn't say, but it's clear that's what she means.

"Where?" He dares to ask, somewhat terrified of the answer he will receive.

"New York." She replies.

Sherlock smiles at her and he repeats what he said nearly two years ago and he means it just as much as he did then as he does now. "I hope you'll be very happy, Molly Hooper" This time however he leaves without placing a kiss on her cheek.

* * *

She leaves just shy of three weeks later. Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and John and even little Rosie see her off. Sherlock stays at his flat playing his violin because he tells himself that it is better this way. That if he were there he would try to stop her from going. To convince her to stay here with her work and her friends and her precious little goddaughter (and him). but he knows that even if he were successful he would only hurt her in some other way in the future, so he just keeps on composing new melodies until his friends arrive back and he puts a smile on his face to greet them.

the next six months pass by without any contact with her, until one day he opens his blog -which he still keeps up despite John telling him it's pretty much pointless- and finds a message from her. Sherlock is so shocked and surprised by this that he actually slams the laptop shut and goes out for a few hours. When he returns he messages her back and slowly but surely they start communicating again.

It's almost like they are getting to know each other for the first time. She tells him about her new job -still a pathologist, that hasn't changed- and her new friends and the new place she lives at. He responds by telling her about the cases he's taken over the past half a year and how much their goddaughter has grown since she left.

At the start of their correspondence, he can tell that she is still wary and unsure of where things stand with their relationship. And he finds himself wishfully thinking that he can repair it to what it was before, and possibly even more.

But that never comes to fruition because two years to the day Molly Hooper leaves London she is killed in a car accident. Sherlock drops everything -even a case he has been working on for the last day that has all the makings of being a ten- to go to America because Molly Hooper, his Molly Hooper, can't die from just a simple car crash.

But she did and there's absolutely nothing he can do. Nobody he can chase down to avenge her death. It had been a simple mistake and Molly Hooper was the unfortunate casualty of it.

He returns home to London with a coffin he can't bear to look at because according to her will she wanted to be buried next to her parents and it is the only logical decision that she returns home with him. A situation he had imagined many times since he began speaking to her again but not like this. Never like this.

Sherlock doesn't attend her funeral because he doesn't want to see someone he cares (cared) about being put in the ground forever. He still goes to see her grave though, as often as he is able.

The years go by and he watches as John finds someone else he falls in love with and marries again and has two more children. Sherlock never bothers to find anyone because he doesn't love anyone (not anymore).

Eventually he retires to a small place in Sussex where he takes up beekeeping of all things. John visits him frequently with his family and together they find they themselves quietly reminiscing on all that's happened to them, which Sherlock will actively deny to anyone who claims that they did. They never seem to be able to talk about Molly, however. That's a wound that's never truly healed.

Sherlock Holmes dies at the ripe old age of eighty-five from a stroke whilst attending to his bees. He is buried in a graveyard in a small town two hours outside of London. The tombstone beside his bears the name Molly Hooper


End file.
